Libra Sun, Scorpio Moon: “Shadowboxin'”

“One does not become enlightened by imagining light, but by making the dark conscious.”- Carl Jung

In many households, when we’re growing up, it’s not too much time that passes by before we get our first talk about “manners”. We’re lectured about their importance and how vital it is for us to be “nice” and polite and on our “best behavior”. In fact, we spend a large portion of our lives using these mantras as a navigational tool and reap the external rewards in the process for being presentable individuals by all accounts.

However, as time goes on and we start having to deal with emotional discomfort, or issues which induce some form of turmoil in our internal life, we suddenly feel ill equipped and unbalanced. As if our education had been incomplete. The lectures we received forgot some VERY important parts. What happened to that talk on emotional honesty? Or, that advice about confronting the elements of our shadow self?

At that point, we realize that Samuel L. Jackson was dead on in the movie “Juice” when he said:

” Just because you pour syrup on shit doesn’t make it pancakes.”

As wild as it may seem, this is one of the most vital lessons to be learned by the Libra Sun, Scorpio Moon combination.

In an individual birth chart, when the Sun is in Libra and the Moon is in Scorpio, participating in the balancing act which weighs one’s self-acceptance against public perception as a kind, cordial and socially acceptable individual fuels one’s vitality. This inner harmony has the potential to be achieved through plumbing the depths of one’s emotional life. Through a personality which faces subconscious fears though gut-level honesty which has resulted from an intimate relationship with the heart.

The Venusian flavored energy seeks equilibrium. It wants nothing more than to reach out, relate and create beauty in the world. The Libra archetype is connected to a keen social and interpersonal intelligence. When blended with the watery desires of the Scorpionic Moon, it suggests that honoring the synthesis of internal and external intelligences is the most effective route to creating said balance.

Howard Gardner explains in his book, “Frames of Mind” :

“On the one side, there is the development of the internal aspects of a person. The core capacity at work here is access to one’s own feeling life-one’s range of affects or emotions: the capacity instantly to effect discriminations among these feelings and, eventually, to label them, to enmesh them in symbolic codes, to draw upon them as a means of understanding and guiding ones behavior.

In its most primitive form, the intrapersonal intelligence amounts to little more than the capacity to distinguish a feeling of pleasure from one of pain and, on the basis of such discrimination to become more involved in or to withdraw from a situation. At its most advanced level, intrapersonal knowledge allows one todetect and to symbolize complex and highly differentiated sets of feelings.”

“The other personal intelligence turns outward, to other individuals. The core capacity here is the ability to notice and make distinctions among other individuals and, in particular, among their moods, temperments. motivations and intentions.”

The challenge in fusing these two variants of personal intelligence stems from one’s willingness to accept the emotional realities inherent in facing one’s shadow, which often leave us disturbed or unsettled.

When operating dysfunctionally, a person with this Sun/Moon blend comfortably points to “those people out there” projecting what they repress, and refusing to dig within their own psyche out of fear that what they’ll find won’t enhance the ego’s view of the self. After all, “it’s not popular to work with this type of material and I’ve been getting rewarded for being such a “good” person for all of my life.” they say…..

However, the refusal to engage in psychic and emotional nudity which can only be developed from an intimately honest relationship with the self, limits our existence. In this case,, fears keep us from being fully alive; from passionate engagement with the full range of human experience.

If one is only willing to consider the portions of themselves they deem acceptable, they’re skillfully constructing an emotional straitjacket by adopting “roles” which limit their human potential as well as their capacity for authenticity.

A constructive picture of this Sun Moon blend looks like an individual who summons the courage within themselves to examine complex elements of their shadow. They realize that just because society accepts them, it doesn’t eliminate repressed elements, and until THEY accept them, they will linger like layered makeup.

This person digs deep to redirect the energy which COULD be spent in presenting an “acceptable” front , to other aspects of their lives which capture their passion and fuel their life force.

Through integrating the dark, a greater light is revealed.

Your theme song is “Shadowboxin'” by the GZA featuring Method Man

You can listen here:

Notes: “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” by Howard Gardner; “Dancing in The Dark : The Shadow Side of Intimate Relationships” by Douglas & Naomi Mosely

12 thoughts on “Libra Sun, Scorpio Moon: “Shadowboxin'””

‘Through integrating the dark, a greater light is revealed.’…Yes indeed, and to quote Jung again ” Our task in this life is to integrate the opposites”. A lifelong task, but infinitely worth embarking upon.